Space Battleship Yamato IV - Yamato 2199 720p - (2012 Lang: Japanese, Sub: English)

Better than the Original - Absolutely love it!

If you're a fan of the original Starblazers, you owe it to yourself to watch this series in its subtitled glory. It may not entirely have the same voice-acting nostalgia you grew up with, but characters you know and love are still there.

The character designs are not exactly the same either, but it borrows aspects of the original art style so that the characters are recognizable. Everything looks and feels fresh, crisp, and new. But the beauty of this re-make is they've kept all the things that make Starblazers/Space Battle Cruiser Yamato the same...the sound effects from the original series are still intact, as well as re-recorded versions of the classic music. C.G. is added to good effect for the actual ship, without sticking out like a sore thumb (*cough*evangelion*cough*).

I just started watching and I'm instantly hooked. ^_^ Anyhow, this review, work in progress, since I just started watching. And I have to get to sleep soon. So, to be continued...

In 2191, Earth made first contact with aliens called Gamilas. First attempt at peaceful contact with the Gamilas failed, resulting in interstellar war. The United Nations Cosmo Navy, even though outmatched by the Gamilas space naval forces, was able to stop their direct assaults on Earth in the second battle for Mars, but suffered heavy losses in the process. The Gamilas, from their military base on Pluto, then started planetary bombardment with modified asteroids called planet bombs. The planet bombs hampered United Nations efforts to rebuild their space fleet and forced Earth to build underground cities to protect humanity. The planet bombs altered the atmosphere and irradiated the planetary surface, causing the complete destruction of the planet's biosphere. The Gamilas then started what is believed to be their first step in terraforming ―preparing the Earth to be inhabited by themselves― by introducing plant life that was lethal to any life on Earth. With mankind facing extinction, the United Nations started planning for a small colony of humans to leave Earth in an attempt at the survival of humanity, called the Isumo Plan. But in early 2198 Starsha, from the planet Iscandar, learned of Earth's situation and dispatched her sister Yurisha to Earth. Yurisha brought with her the designs to what is called the Dimensional Wave Motion Engine, providing for interstellar flight along with other technological assistance to Earth. The Iscandarans revealed that they could reverse the damage done to the Earth with the Cosmo Reverse System. For technical reasons they could not send the system directly and would need Earth to send a ship for it. The United Nations then scrapped the Isumo Plan in order to build a new Cosmo Navy ship to retrieve the Cosmo Reverse System. The new ship was designed as a heavily armed space battleship. To conceal the ship's construction from the Gamilas, Earth built the new ship at the same site as the sunken World War II Yamato battleship. The new space battleship was also named the Yamato for which the series Space Battleship Yamato 2199 is named.

Over the course of the series, the Yamato and its crew were continually attacked by Gamilan forces on Jupiter, the moons of Saturn, and Pluto. As the Yamato battled its way out of the Solar System and the Milky Way Galaxy, Gamilas leader Abert Dessler took a personal interest in the unusually advanced and seemingly unstoppable Earth vessel. Suspicious of Iscandar's involvement in the humans' quest, Dessler schemed to stop the Yamato at all costs before it could fulfill its mission ― even as political intrigue plagued his empire. To this end, he ordered his top military commanders and most sophisticated spacecraft into the fight, putting the determination of the Yamato crew to even more rigorous tests as they coped with questions about their mission and strange incidents aboard their own ship.

First off, thank you Bandai and the production team for bringing this back.

I watched the original when I was 10-12 years old, so on a personal level it was nostalgic. That being said, the story has been modernized in a very technical way to add "onion like" layers to the level of realism.

The combat scenes were the finest space battle scenes I have ever seen in live action or Anime, in their detail, Better than the New Battlestar Galactica IMHO. The CGI and 2D animation was blended masterfully.

The Story has been updated in a way to fill in the realism gaps without stepping on the Original. The Characters have real and individual motives and the antagonists are no exception.

You do not have to have watched the original, the movie, or even anime, to thoroughly enjoy this series.

Space Opera at its finest - Faithful remake of a classic!